My Story of Following Him Out

This is the story of my journey following Jesus out of church-as-we-know-it. When I first followed Him out in 2003, I had never heard of "emerging" or "organic church" or "missional." In fact, I've only recently become aware of these movements. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that God has taken a number of people on this journey, and spoke to them many of the same things He was speaking to my husband and I. Anyway, here's my story:

I left church primarily because I was I was discontent with my own spiritual barrenness, and the barrenness of the churches in my city. None of us were producing new believers. People were switching churches, so some churches experienced ‘growth’ from that. But the kingdom was remaining static. It was not growing in my city, and that broke me. I began to question why we were so inwardly focused on our own spiritual transformation while millions of hurting people outside the walls were ignored. Besides, I began to wonder why we thought that sitting for an hour to listen to someone talk to us about the Bible (which many of us already had considerable exposure to, having been Christians for years and years) and singing a few songs was forming Christ in us. An understanding of "worship" as liturgy is quite different from an understanding of worship as a life to be lived. (But that's for another post).

I left institutional church because I realized my Christianity cannot be about me (and my growth). It cannot be about my community of believers (and our growth). It has to be about love. Yes, love for each other (the faith community), but why do we stop there? (The statistics of North America, from a missiological perspective, are deeply disturbing to me). And then I went and heard Heidi Baker preach. That threw me over the edge. She said some not-so-nice things, but had the fruit to back it up. And I was confronted with my own personal barrenness and was forced to take personal responsibility for contributing to these statistics, I cried out to God this simple prayer: “Lord, heal my barrenness.” Barrenness in scripture has always been considered a curse, but I fear we are comfortable with it here in North America as normal Christianity. Normal Christianity is reproductive.

I left institutional church because God called me out (a lot of people would not believe that God would do that). But I believe He is retraining many of us as a process of healing our barrenness, and giving us an outward, apostolic focus that seeks to expand his kingdom (rather than merely maintain the believers we have now). And not just to outreach and in-drag. I am just beginning to learn about Jesus’s message of the kingdom. (He preached the majority of His messages on the kingdom, and mentioned the “church” only 2 or 3 times). Have we confused ‘church’ with the kingdom of God (and our goal of its expansion)? I think we have. In fact, I think we’ve replaced the latter with the former (and in a way, made the church into an idol. We cannot substitute an institution for the power of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural, otherworldly kindgom of God). And I believe that an incarnational-missional approach will birth faith-groups who maintain relationship. That's what my husband and I did in university in Calgary, and it worked. But we didn't have the language for it - we had never heard of Alan Hirsch or Mike Frost or any of them. In any case, I know from experience that we can lose a lot of the institutionalization, religious liturgy and paraphernalia that we associate with "church." And Christ will be revealed to new converts and formed in them. We never set out to start a 'church' so we didn't care that it was small. But being small, it was very effective!

Yes, relationship and relationships of diversity (in denominational background, personal opinion and gifting and calling etc) are very important. But I believe a natural and organic relational form of ‘church’ outside of institutions can reflect that kind of diversity.

For some of us, it isn’t bitterness or hurt that brought us out. I know that some have left because of toxic, unhealthy environments. And I also know that not all institutional churches are toxic. Some are very healthy, and I continue to learn from healthy leaders who are within those systems. However, my journey was a little different, so I just wanted to include it in the dialogue in hopes to contribute to mutual understanding. :)

PS. I think it's kind of ironic and amusing that 'platform ministry' led to this journey of mine. God uses everything, He really does. ;)